Husband Removes Art, Offers Basquiat at Christie’s Before Filing for Divorce

This Basquiat estimated at $4-6m is slated for Christie’s Tuesday night Postwar and Contemporary art sale but the wife of its owner (he says his company owns it and it is not marital property) just discovered it was for sale. She also just learned that she’s getting divorced:

Tracey Hejailan-Amon filed suit in Manhattan Monday against her soon-to-be ex, Maurice Alain Amon, saying she collected between 17 and 20 modern works including Andy Warhol’s 1966 “Self-Portrait” and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1986 “Saxaphone” with her husband throughout their marriage.

Then, in October, Amon’s art consultants “surreptitiously” lifted the collection from their $16 million Manhattan apartment and stashed them in a Queens storage facility while she was abroad, according to the filing.

“These illegal and unlawful removals of the works of art is and was a strategic predicate for the service of a divorce action by Amon,” Hejailan charges in her suit. He later filed for divorce in Monaco. “She was in Europe and she didn’t even know what was going on. She thought she was happily married,” said Hejailan’s attorney, Aaron Richard Golub.

My ex secretly stashed our priceless art before filing for divorce: socialite (New York Post)